United Nations Students Association University Of Ghana, Legon ...

United Nations Students Association 

University Of Ghana, Legon 

Committee Second: Economic and Financial Committee. 

Topic: Mitigation of Poverty through Global Partnership; What More We Can Do? 

Research Guide for Committee 

Introduction 

1. Poverty in its various forms has increasingly occupied the attention of the international community 

during the last decade. Successive Summits have made commitments to drastically reduce the misery 

from which so many humans suffer throughout their lives. Such attention is in itself an encouraging 

step forward, but actual progress is still painfully slow, even though measures to improve the 

livelihoods of the poor are affordable. Hunger and food insecurity – the most serious forms of extreme 

poverty – have now become international priorities, and participants in the 1996 World Food Summit 

made a solemn commitment to halve hunger in the world by 2015. 

2. The Millennium Declaration of 2000 consolidates and restates the commitments agreed during the 

preceding decade, and can be seen as the final stage of the Summit process. For the first time in a 

document of its kind, it stresses that, without policies and mechanisms to mobilise private and public 

resources on a much larger scale, the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals 

(MDGs) for reducing poverty and hunger and for social and sustainable development cannot be 

achieved. The Declaration is thus a starting point for renewed action in the twenty-first century. 

The Ghana International Model UN Conference can redress the failures and biases of the past by 

making its prime objective that of ensuring adequate funding for the achievement of the MDGs. 

3. The Ghana International Model UN Conference offers the opportunity to put an end to a paradox 

that characterized the 1990s: that, while global commitment to progress in the fight against poverty 

seemed to be gaining strength and the means to tackle the problem were increasing, the volume of 

resources actually mobilized fell year after year. The gap between commitment and action has 

widened, which inevitably raises questions about the genuineness of the commitment. 

4. This paper looks at financing for the achievement of the MDGs. It does so from the perspective of 

FAO, IFAD and WFP, the three Rome-based United Nations organizations working on food, agriculture, 

and rural development issues. The paper shows how widespread hunger is an impediment to overall 

growth and poverty reduction efforts. The paper emphasizes that mobilizing and carefully deploying 

resources where the impact can be greatest, is fundamental to the effort to reduce poverty, hunger and 

food insecurity. In that context it illustrates that resources deployed in fighting hunger directly and in 

agricultural and rural development can make substantial and sustainable contributions to overall 

poverty alleviation. 

Email: gimun100@yahoo.com 

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Chairperson’s Remark 



I would like to welcome you as a delegate on the second committee on behalf of the bureau. This 

committee will deliberate on the topic: “Mitigation of poverty through global partnership; what more 

we can do.” I look forward to your co-operation and maximum participation in the discussions of the 

committee. 

The topic the 2 nd Committee was carefully chosen taking into consideration the first and eighth goals of 

the Millennium Development Goal of the United Nations Organization; namely Eradicating extreme 

poverty and hunger and poverty and Developing a global partnership for development, respectively. 

Delegates should however note that though discussions at the level of the second committee will be 

based on the first and eighth goals, a fair knowledge on the other goals will be necessary as it will 

enhance the discussion. 

REQUIREMENTS 

Each delegate is required to submit his/ her country’s position paper upon arrival. During the committee 

sitting, each delegate will be allowed a maximum of 4minutes to present his/ her country’s position on 

the topic. Delegates are advised to be very precise in their presentations and clarity of language is highly 

recommended. 

Taking into consideration the topic for discussion: “Mitigation of poverty through global partnership; 

what more we can do,” it is highly recommended that all discussions are channelled towards innovative 

and practical ways of mitigating poverty through global partnership. 

SUMMARY 

Throughout history, countries have had to shoulder their development independently though there was 

a great interaction among various countries and nations. In recent times however these walls have been 

broken, with the establishment of worldwide bodies to facilitate development issues and the greater 

sense of the world as a global village. Thus the topic for discussion; “Mitigation of poverty through 

global partnership; what more we can do.” 

Though various efforts are being made, there still exists a large divide between the terms of global 

partnership and the benefits that the industrialized countries and the developing and under developed 

world receives. With this trend, there exist great disparities with poorer nations having little or no 

access to things considered necessities in other countries. 

Various sectors of the economies of poorer countries can be identified as lacking certain basic needs. 

This challenge can however be easily addressed through effective global partnership. Areas of much 

concern are in the availability and distribution of drugs and medicines, provision of basic education and 

services such as electricity, telephone and internet. 





Also, as a step to mitigate poverty through global partnership in times past, great effort has been made 

in the area of debt relief through programs such as the HIPIC Initiative of the World Bank and the 

International Monetary Fund (IMF). HIPIC for instance created a framework for all creditors, including 

multilateral creditors, to provide debt relief to the world’s poorest and heavily indebted countries, and 

thereby reduce the constraint on economic growth and poverty reduction imposed by the debt build-up 

in these countries. 

However in terms of poverty reduction, two key questions have been raised: first, to what extent has 

micro finance made a lasting difference in bringing households out of poverty on a permanent basis? 

Second to what extent micro finance does program which the “core poor” and not just the better off 

among the poor? 

I do agree with seasoned advocates of Microfinance, that, microfinance alone cannot eradicate poverty. 

Micro finance is not the solution to global poverty, but neither is help, or education, or economic 

growth. There is no one single solution to global poverty. The solution must include a broad array of 

empowering interventions and micro finance, when targeted to the very poor and effectively run, is one 

powerful tool (Daley-Harris, Pollin and Montgomery, 2007, p.1). 

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that we will have a fruitful discussion and that at the end of the 

conference we will be able to come out with practical ways of mitigating poverty through global 

partnership. 

Thank you all! 



Executive Summary 



At the dawn of the 21st century we are still a long way from achieving what has eluded humanity for 

thousands of years, a world free from hunger and poverty. The past thirty years, however, have brought 

us closer to reaching this goal in a large part of the developing world. The lives of millions have been 

transformed at a pace unparalleled in human history and to an extent that would have seemed 

unthinkable only a generation ago. 

However, there is no room for complacency. Even today, close to 1.2 billion people – a fifth of the 

world’s population – continue to live in conditions of abject poverty. Almost 800 million people in the 

developing world are chronically hungry. A basic right, the right to adequate and nutritious food, which 

most people take for granted, remains a distant dream for those who fight with food shortages every 

day of their lives. The presence of deep poverty and hunger on such a vast scale in a world of apparent 

opulence is a moral outrage. 

What is encouraging is that the international community has adopted the reduction of poverty and 

hunger eradication as overarching goals for development. Starting in the early 1990s, targets have been 

agreed upon for the reduction of poverty in its various forms and dimensions. Goals have been set for 

reducing poverty, raising school enrolment, moving towards gender equality, cutting infant and 

maternal mortality, improving access to reproductive health services, and adopting national strategies 

for sustainable development. In addition, at the World Food Summit, held in 

Rome in 1996, all nations committed themselves to the goal of halving the number of undernourished 

people from around 800 million to 400 million by 2015. Together, these targets have been adopted in 

the Millennium Development Goals which offer the promise of making the world a better place for the 

whole of humanity. 

The dimensions of hunger and malnutrition are alarming and cannot leave anyone indifferent. An 

estimated 174 million under-five children in the developing world were malnourished in 1996-98, and 

6.6 million out of 12.2 million deaths among children in that age group are associated with malnutrition. 

Hunger is an important cause as well as an effect of poverty. The effects of hunger go beyond its terrible 

toll on those who suffer from it. Hunger has substantial economic costs for individuals, families and 

whole societies. Labour, often the only asset of the poor, is devalued for the hungry. 

Mental and physical health is compromised by lack of food, cutting productivity, output and the wages 

that people earn. Chronically hungry people cannot accumulate the financial or human capital which 

would allow them to escape poverty. And hunger has an inter-generational dimension, with 

undernourished mothers giving birth to underweight children. In societies where hunger is widespread, 

economic growth, an essential element in sustainable poverty reduction, is severely compromised. 

Who are the poor and what is the principal source of their livelihoods? Nearly three quarters of the poor 

in developing countries live in rural areas. And the rapid increase in urban poverty can be explained by 

the decline of agriculture and the rural sector. The rural face of poverty, human misery and hunger 

indicates that the battle for hunger and poverty alleviation will be won or lost in rural areas. 

Many of rural poor are small farmers who are at the edge of survival or they are land-less people 

seeking to sell their labour. They depend on agriculture for their earnings, either directly, as producers 

or hired workers, or indirectly in sectors which derive their existence from farming. 

Trading, transportation, processing, involving large numbers of small entrepreneurs, are necessary for 

agriculture but at the same time they depend on farming activities for their survival. 

If we are to bring about a rapid reduction in poverty and hunger this will require a two-pronged 

strategy. On one hand, direct measures have to be taken to enhance the access of those in extreme 





poverty to the food they need for an active life: this empowers them to break out of the hunger trap 

and allows them to participate fully in development processes. At the same time, efforts must be 

stepped up to promote broad-based agricultural and rural development which will create the 

opportunities for a sustainable exit from poverty. These two elements of the proposed strategy are 

essential for rapid, substantial and sustainable reduction in poverty and hunger. They are also mutually 

reinforcing since advancement in one improves the effectiveness of the other. When feeding 

programmes and food-based safety nets are supplied from local production, this leads to a double 

benefit: not only are the hungry fed but local markets for food expand, opening income earning and 

employment opportunities for the poor. 

The responsibility for escaping from hunger and poverty rests first and foremost with the individuals 

themselves, and then with their families, communities and governments. Under international human 

rights legislation, governments have an obligation, when private action fails, 

to ensure that people can enjoy their right to adequate food. The proportion of public expenditure 

which developing countries now devote to agricultural and rural development and food security is, 

however, far from adequate, especially in countries where food deprivation is highest, implying a need 

to adjust public finance priorities 

However the international community has important roles in supporting national endeavours, not least 

to help governments, especially those of low income countries, to meet the costs of the necessary 

investments to the extent that these cannot be met by their own resources. 

And yet there remains a conspicuous gap between the implied acceptance of global responsibility for 

eradicating hunger and poverty and the extent to which concrete action has been taken nationally and 

internationally. In spite of the obvious benefits, resources for programmes related 

to food and nutrition to benefit the needy, seem to be only a fraction of what is required to make 

a substantial difference. There is a visible and worrisome downward trend in the resources, private and 

public, directed towards agricultural and rural development, especially in those countries where hunger 

and poverty are widespread. This trend has been particularly pronounced in the programmes of the 

international financing institutions as well as in those of many bilateral donors and national 

governments, in spite of reiterated commitments to expand investment in agricultural and rural 

development. For the most part, instead of meeting their declared goal of increasing their support for 

agriculture and rural development, most donors have been partners to a progressive decline. For poor 

countries with low capacity to mobilise sufficient amounts of either domestic savings or foreign direct 

investment, substantial flows of Official Development Assistance including multilateral lending are 

required to create the conditions (capacity building, infrastructure, public goods and institutions) for 

attracting private capital into agriculture, whether domestic or foreign. 

International trade offers opportunities for developing countries to expand into new markets and 

products and to improve growth and food security prospects. While there are potential gains from freer 

trade in farm products, the actual progress made in the ongoing negotiations has been limited so far, 

and the benefits remain modest. If further liberalisation focuses too narrowly on a removal of OECD 

subsidies, the lion’s share of gains will accrue to developed country consumers and taxpayers. More 

important for developing countries are: a removal of trade barriers for products in which they have a 

comparative advantage and a reduction or reversal of tariff escalation for processed commodities; more 

and deeper preferential access for the poorest of the least developed countries; open borders for longterm 

foreign investments (FDI); and improved quality assurance and food safety programmes that 

enable developing countries to compete more efficiently in markets abroad. The resources gained by 





trade liberalisation and reductions in domestic protection could be channelled into additional 

development funding. 

Serious consideration must be given to possible new financing mechanisms, given their potential 

importance in transferring resources between developed and developing countries and hence the 

extent to which they could supplement Official Development Assistance. While the call for a significant 

rise in ODA is very welcome, measures have to be taken to ensure adherence to agreed targets. 

Proposals have to be made which would ensure smoother and more dependable replenishment 

arrangements especially regarding concessional loan funds administered by the IFIs. 

It is important also that credible recommendations are made on the financing of an expanded flow of 

the global public goods – now in desperately short supply and competing with ODA – required to ensure 

the smooth operation of the processes of globalisation and the sustainable management of the world’s 

resources 

The Rome-based UN Organisations concerned with poverty, food and agriculture believe that the 

International Conference on Financing for Development must identify the extent of funds, whether 

domestic or international, needed to achieve the internationally agreed goals, especially those for 

hunger and poverty reduction. We firmly believe that it is fundamentally wrong to consider assistance to 

the poor and hungry an act of charity. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is a moral imperative, 

but it also makes great economic sense. Our work and the work of others clearly demonstrate that it is 

in the self-interest of the international community, rich and poor countries alike, to eradicate hunger 

and poverty wherever it appears. Eradicating hunger and poverty is an investment with high payoff in 

terms of peace and political stability, overall development and prosperity. 

The slow progress in meeting the internationally agreed goals points to the need not only for increasing 

the volume of resources devoted to this effort, but also to target them more effectively. 

International funding for hunger eradication and agriculture and rural development needs to rise to a 

scale commensurate with the problem and be advanced under affordable terms and conditions which 

do not lead to increases in developing country indebtedness. 

THE VICIOUS CIRCLE OF POVERTY AND HUNGER 

Poverty and hunger: recent trends and future scenarios 

5. The international community has pledged to halve poverty and hunger by 2015. But who are the poor 

and the hungry? How many are there? Where are they located? What is the relationship between 

hunger and poverty? The next two sections address these questions and emphasize the urgency of the 

fight to reduce hunger. 

6. On the basis of the “one-dollar-a-day threshold”, there are 1.2 billion poor people in developing 

countries. Of these, 780 million suffer from chronic hunger, which means that their daily intake of 

calories is insufficient for them to live active and healthy lives. 

7. Extreme poverty remains an alarming problem in the world’s developing regions, despite the 

advances made in the 1990s. Progress in poverty reduction has been concentrated in Asia and especially 

East Asia. In all the other regions, the number of people in extreme poverty has increased. In sub- 

Saharan Africa, there were 58 million more poor people in 1999 than in 1990. 

8. World Bank projections (World Bank, 2001) show that by 2015, the proportion of people living below 

the one-dollar-a-day poverty line will be 12.3 percent as compared to 29.0 percent in 1990 – well below 

half the 1990 proportion. The projections assume substantially higher economic growth rates than 

experienced in the recent past. If the assumptions turn out to be accurate, the MDG of halving the 

proportion of people in poverty world-wide between 1990 and 2015 will have been met. 





However, even using the optimistic growth assumptions, in sub-Saharan Africa nearly 40 percent of the 

population will still be in poverty by 2015 while there will be 45 million more poor people in the subcontinent 

than in 1999. Clearly, there is no room for complacency. 

9. The proportion of hungry people in developing countries was reduced by 3 percentage points in the 

1990s, despite population growth. Although this constitutes progress, the prevalence of hunger is still 

unacceptably high. At the start of the twenty-first century, in a world of conspicuous affluence, 34 

percent of the people in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from chronic hunger (Figure 1). 

This means 24 million more undernourished people at the end of the decade than at the beginning. 

10. Progress in reducing the number of undernourished has been alarmingly slow. The target set at the 

1996 World Food Summit was to halve the number of undernourished people by 2015 from their 

number in 1990-92. The latest data show that the number of undernourished is falling by 6 million a 

year. This means that the annual rate of reduction has to be stepped up to 22 million. 

Hunger and poverty: exploring the reverse linkages 

13. Widespread hunger and malnutrition in a world of plentiful food implies that extreme poverty is the 

root cause of undernourishment. It is not always understood, however, that hunger and malnutrition 

(including micronutrient deficiencies) are in turn major causes of poverty. They affect the ability of 

individuals to escape poverty in several ways (Box 1) through: 

● Reducing the capacity for physical activity and hence the productive potential of the labour of those 

who suffer from hunger – and that is usually their only asset. 

● Impairing people’s ability to develop physically and mentally, retarding child growth, reducing 

cognitive ability and seriously inhibiting school attendance and performance – thus compromising the 

effectiveness of investment in education. 

● Causing serious long-term damage to health, linked to higher rates of disease and premature death. 

● Passing from generation to generation: hungry mothers give birth to underweight children who start 

life with a handicap. 

● Contributing to social and political instability that further undermines government capacity to reduce 

poverty. 

Chronically undernourished people are, therefore, caught in a hunger trap of low productivity, chronic 

poverty and hunger. 

Hunger and conflict 

14. During the last decade, food insecurity and malnutrition appear to have contributed to an increasing 

frequency of crisis events as well as to the vulnerability of countries to shocks. Most of today’s armed 

conflicts and natural disasters are concentrated in regions heavily dependent on agriculture and in 

countries with a high proportion of food-insecure households and classified by FAO as “low-income food 

deficit”. 

15. As well as being a consequence of a conflict, food insecurity can be the cause and lead to conflict. 

Very few new conflicts start in a food secure environment. Hunger may induce conflict when people feel 

they have nothing to lose and military service offers a free meal and the power that goes with touting a 

gun. 

16. The impact of various crises will be also amplified when they affect a population that is already 

vulnerable and weakened by food insecurity. People in poor and food insecure countries are more likely 

to die from natural disaster than those who have developed better coping strategies to protect 





themselves. Crises often create the opportunity for underlying micronutrient deficiencies to develop 

into large outbreaks, for instance of pellagra or scurvy. 

Evidence on the Cost of Hunger 

There is evidence that 46 million years of productive, disability-free life were lost in 1990, the result of 

lost social productivity caused by four types of malnutrition: stunting and disorders related to iodine, 

iron and vitamin A deficiency. 156 million children under five in developing countries suffer from protein 

energy malnutrition. 90 percent of all anaemic pre-schoolers and expectant mothers live in developing 

countries. Vitamin A deficiency is the primary cause of preventable eye defects and blindness in 

children. 

About 17 percent of infants suffer from intra-uterine growth retardation, an indication of poor maternal 

nutrition. Low birth weight means a high risk of illness and death during infancy and reduced work 

capacity and strength in adulthood. 12 million deaths each year among children under five in the 

developing world – a staggering 55 percent are associated with malnutrition. 

A study of Sierra Leonean agriculture showed that, on average, a 50 percent increase in calories per 

consumer equivalent would increase output by 16.5 percent, or 379 kg of food. The findings show that 

the lower the calorie intake is, the more significant output response is to increased calorie intake. For 

example, based on a daily intake of 1 500 calories per consumer equivalent, a mere 10 percent increase 

in calorie intake would increase output by nearly 5 percent. 

A study in Ethiopia has shown that a 10 percent improvement in weight-for-height and Bod MasIndex 

(BMI) would lead to a 23 and 27 percent increase in output and wages respectively. In the same study 

height, an indicator of past nutritional experience is found to be a significant determinant of wages, with 

a person who is 7.1 cm. above the average height, earning about 15 percent higher wages. 

An FAO study found that raising Dietary Energy Supply (DES) to 2 770 kcal/day in countries in which the 

average is below that level, would increase per capita GDP growth by 0.34 to 1.48 percentage points per 

year in countries where DES is below that level. Improved nutrition affects economic growth through 

greater labour productivity and life expectancy. 

3 percent of GDP every year is lost in some Asian countries through productivity losses resulting from 

stunting and iodine and iron deficiencies. Given that GDP growth rates in these countries were up to 7 

percent per annum in the nineties – it follows that large losses in GDP have taken place. 

50 percent of the economic growth in the United Kingdom and France between 1700 and 1900 resulted 

from improvements in nutrition and health, according to Nobel laureate Robert Fogel. 

17. The lack of sufficient resources for eradicating hunger will continue to put at risk the life of many 

vulnerable groups and will be one of the elements which contribute to the resurgence of emergencies. 

Therefore, savings from conflict avoidance should be understood as “returns” to aid. 

Following emergencies, humanitarian interventions are often necessary, but they are expensive and do 

not generally tackle the underlying causes of the crises. The need for relief will remain as long as 

vulnerable people do not get access to adequate food and to gainful economic opportunities. 

Timely investment in food , agriculture and rural development can help to break the repetitive cycle of 

hunger and conflict. 

18. The preceding discussion shows that alleviating hunger for those who suffer from it allows them to 

fully develop their physical and mental skills, increases their productivity and allows them to fully 

participate in the development process. Hunger reduction should therefore be thought as a productive 

investment in addition to a pressing moral obligation. Wisely conceived policies that target hunger 

directly and in a timely fashion, can break the “hunger trap”. 





POVERTY, AGRICULTURE AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT 

The rural face of poverty and hunger and the role of agriculture 

19. The slow pace of poverty and hunger reduction points to an urgent need for strategies that better 

target the areas where poor people live and the activities on which their lives depend. A successful 

strategy for alleviating poverty and hunger in developing countries must begin by recognizing that they 

are mainly rural phenomena and that agriculture is at the heart of the livelihoods of rural people. 

20. Today, 75 percent of poor people in developing countries live in rural areas. In 2020, when the 

majority of the world population is projected to live in urban areas, 60 percent of poverty will still be 

rural poverty. And rural decline is among the root causes of premature urbanisation and urban poverty. 

There are several arguments supporting a rural focus for development aimed at poverty reduction 

(IFAD: Rural Poverty Report): 

● Major differences in incomes, poverty, nutrition, health and education between towns and rural areas 

are not shrinking: most of the “dollar-poor” will still be rural in 2020. 

● The decline in rural poverty has slowed in recent years; it was much more rapid in 1970-85. 

● Addressing rural poverty cuts urban poverty by reducing migration. 

● Reducing rural poverty depends on raising the productivity of the poor – but most approaches to 

urban poverty are welfare-oriented. 

● Increases in worker/child ratios provide a window of opportunity for poverty reduction. The rural poor 

need female empowerment and improved health and education to permit reduced fertility. 

● Aid goes increasingly to non-rural sectors, where most of the poor do not live or work. It is 

disproportionately distributed among countries, to the detriment of countries in greater need. 

21. Agriculture is the principal driving force of the rural economy and, for those developing countries 

without substantial mineral resources, often the whole economy. Dependence on agriculture for 

economic growth and export earnings increases with the prevalence of hunger, and so does the 

proportion of people whose lives depend on the rural economy (see Table 1 ).2 Box 2 demonstrates that 

massive, sustainable poverty and hunger reduction is inconceivable without growth in rural economies, 

and summarizes the evidence, showing the potential of agricultural growth to reduce poverty. 

22. Hunger and poverty reduction require that the incomes of poor people and the sources from which 

they derive their livelihoods be enhanced. Therefore, pro-poor income growth needs to be encouraged. 

The question is: under what circumstances is income growth pro-poor? The short answer is that income 

growth originating in agricultural development will reduce poverty, provided that it does not occur in a 

context of high inequality in asset ownership. 

23. Rural households generate income from agriculture or employment in non-farm rural activities. 

Agricultural income originates from subsistence production, revenues from the sale of produce or 

employment in agriculture. The rural non-farm sector provides goods and services linked to agriculture, 

such as input preparation, repair of machinery and implements, output processing, transport and 

marketing. Income earned from agricultural activities creates demand for the output of small rural 

enterprises. It takes few skills to establish or work for such enterprises, so they are readily accessible to 

the poor. Initial productivity-induced growth in agricultural output will create multiplier effects in nonfarm 

economies, increasing the incomes of those involved. It will also raise the incomes of those directly 

engaged in farming. 

24. This process cannot work, however, if there are marked inequalities in access to agricultural and 

other assets, especially land. Large capital-intensive holdings tend to use inputs imported from abroad 





or from large towns and income is often invested outside the immediate area on which the farm is 

located; interaction with local economies will be limited. Small farms are much more fully integrated 

with local markets even if, ultimately, they are significant suppliers of export goods.3 

TOWARDS A TWIN-TRACK STRATEGY 

25. The above discussion shows that achieving massive and sustainable poverty reduction entails 

(a) targeting hunger directly so as to increase the productivity and productive potential of those who 

suffer from it, and allow them to take advantage of the opportunities offered by development and (b) 

stimulating agriculture and rural development, both essential for both overall economic growth and 

sustainable reductions in poverty. The productivity handicap caused by hunger must be dealt with 

directly if agricultural development is to proceed as it should. People in abject hunger must have enough 

to eat if they are to share the benefits of agricultural and rural growth. The vicious circle of 

undernourishment leading to low productivity and growth perpetuates underdevelopment and hunger. 

Hungry people must have better access to food, which requires direct assistance. The vicious circle must 

be broken. 

Recent literature explores the role of agriculture in poverty reduction. Some results are summarized 

here. 

_ Primary and tertiary sector growth reduce poverty, secondary sector growth has no significant impact 

on poverty. 

_ Growth in rural areas reduces poverty in both rural and urban areas, urban growth reduces poverty 

only in urban areas. 

_ Growth in small-farm production reduces the number of people in poverty and reduces its severity: 

the consumption of the poorest may be increased. 

_ In countries where income inequalities are small, labour productivity increases in agriculture are 

consistently more important than those other sectors in generating income increases (Timmer, 1997). 

_ In sub-Saharan Africa, sustained growth in rural incomes, when widely distributed across households, 

is capable of unlocking significant additional growth.

United Nations Students Association University Of Ghana, Legon ...

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